The last time I played tennis was on a blind date a million years ago with someone named Milford. He was something I wouldn’t have believed before we got on the court: a worse player than I was.

I have not used the ensuing years to pursue my game. Instead, I let my two sisters take care of that fitness aspect for me. But I do know it is a wonderful exercise for a few reasons; among them, these, from United States Tennis Association:

2. Bone benefits. Tennis players who play regularly show a 7- to 20 percent increase in bone strength in their upper and lower body by playing regularly. Great news for people suffering from such annoying and dangerous conditions such as osteopenia or osteoporosis.

3. Cholesterol benefits. Playing regularly helps improve good cholesterol by elevating the HDL level. We all know what that leads to, right? Yep, reduction of heart disease and stroke.

4. Calorie-burning benefits. Depending on your age, and how much your tromping around the court, a 160-pound person will burn an average 584 calories per hour, according to the Mayo Clinic.

5. Additional benefits. Tennis players have been shown to have lower body-fat composition than the general population. Not only that, tennis helps speed reaction times.

If you’d like to get started getting these benefits working for you, or if you’re already playing tennis but would like to be part of a team, well, good news. USTA league registration is now open. Drop an email to leagues@dta.org. or click here for more info.

Looking for a good family sport? The United States Tennis Association is hoping that if you are, you’ll put tennis high on that list. To introduce families to the sport, they’re offering free tennis festivals aimed at all ages and skill levels in Dallas-Fort Worth during March.

Why March? That’s because March is “Tennis Night in America” at New York’s Madison Square Garden when 2012 US Open champion, Serena Williams squares off against two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka and former world No. 1 Rafael Nadal faces US Open champion Juan Martin del Potro in the BNP Paribas Showdown.

Here’s a list of the upcoming festivals. You can get more information at youthtennis.com.

That’s right — I blame high school sports for the rise in Type 2 diabetes in kids, an epidemic you can read on the DMN front page here.

What? Sports is the best antidote for Type 2 diabetes, which is caused by a sedentary lifestyle and poor nutrition, you say. Exactly my point. And who gets to do sports in high school — particularly in our large public high schools? Very few. In fact, in schools like my kids’ schools where thousands attend, only a tiny percentage of a tiny percentage of kids make the teams which are highly competitive. And to make the teams, they have to be already fit and eating right. In short, high school sports DO NOT help the one in three American teens who are obese to get active and healthy. You have to be active and healthy to do high school sports. And even then, you will find plenty of kids who come into high school active and healthy and wanting to do high school sports only to be rejected from these exclusionary teams where the scoreboard, and the win-loss record, seem far more important to everyone than the kids.

When I interviewed Timothy Shriver, the chairman and CEO of Special Olympics, about the lack of exercise and consequent poor health in many kids with special needs, I realized those kids are the canaries in the high school sports mine. They have a 38% obesity rate which is not helped by being generally excluded from most school sports with some notable exceptions such as Davis Hartley, an 18-year-old with Down syndrome who was welcomed on the football team at J.J. Pearce in Richardson. (Kudos to Pearce football coach Randy Robertson who made it a wonderful experience for Davis and his teammates).

Far more common is the experience of Lauren Potter, an actress with Down syndrome who plays a cheerleader on the fictional Fox television hit Glee. She was cast not long after she was rejected from her real life team in Los Angeles, an incident which her mother, Robin Sinkhorn told me Lauren found crushing.

“She wasn’t trying out for the competition team, she just wanted to cheer,” Robin told me by phone from California. “She was devastated. We felt really bad for her and we thought about how the coach totally missed that opportunity to teach that lesson of inclusion to the kids.”You can read my story here.

So what’s the solution? I would like to to see EVERY kid on a school sports team the same way everyone who wants to be in the band is in the band — it’s just a question of which one. Ladder the teams if you want to so as the kids get more skillful, they can move up to higher teams. Let the school teams play each other the way that the recreational leagues do.

Too expensive? For many parents doing the recreational teams or after school sports lessons are too expensive or too time consuming with parents at work, so those kids do nothing at all. Plus there’s that insidious message that if you’re not good enough to make the high school team, you’re a loser and wasting your time in recreational sports. Personally, I think having a generation of kids on oral medication and then, when that fails (as the new study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and released Sunday in the New England Journal of Medicine shows they do after just a couple of years in teens) taking insulin, with one in five suffering serious complications (we’re talking vision loss, nerve damage, kidney failure, limb amputation – even heart attacks and strokes) is a lot more expensive.

Get kids hooked on playing as they did when they were in elementary school when everyone played before middle school sports tryouts which separate the “stars” from everyone else, and you’ll get them interested in good nutrition, because it will help them improve their performance, and ultimately a lifestyle for life.

I had an eye opening experience when my son, Sam, spent a college semester in England at Liverpool Hope University. He immediately went out for the tennis team and made it which was not surprising — he plays for his Whittier College team, too. (That’s because we were fortunate enough to be able to afford years of after school tennis lessons for him and the United States Tennis Association offered so much tournament experience here in Texas) But Sam was THRILLED when he found out that he also had a shot at basketball, a sport he loves but was never able to play for even his middle school here in Texas.

“Mom, they’re TERRIBLE in basketball in England,” he said happily. “I made the varsity team!”

Sam put up pictures of himself in his basketball uniform. Not usually the most talkative fellow (to his mom, anyway), he was so excited to share the details of hanging out with the guys on the team, going on the road with them to other English colleges, how after a few rough starts they were winning game after game.

That’s when I realized that what we need here in Texas and the United States are more terrible teams — where the kids go out, play, exercise, bond and have a blast.

Varsity players? Let them play in their bubble the way professional players play in theirs. Some people are into it? Fine. Personally, it’s not my thing and you will never see me at a high school varsity game no matter how fancy the stadium, arena or field of competition is.

But put my kids in a high school game, no matter how terrible the team? I’m there, rooting and cheering and excited and happy win or lose because I know they’re exercising, bonding and learning the life lessons that come with being part of a team, trying your best, being a good sport, being inclusive and bringing out the best in everyone on both sides.

Put everyone’s kids in high school games, you’ll boost kids’ spirits and health, kids’ loyalty and affection for their school and parents’ attachment and appreciation for their children’s school. That, to me, is the first step towards reversing our kids’ risk of Type 2 diabetes.